On the challenges of tagging and hierarchy, and the folly of attempting to define popularity before it exists.

The StackOverflow private beta is still scheduled for early next month. We have to go through at least one full cycle privately with Joel first. Beyond that, we will be seeding the site with the existing content of the discuss.joelonsoftware.com .NET questions forum.

On the absurdity and emotional emptiness of TechCrunch. Is it venture capital pornography?

We did our first server deployment of the stackoverflow code, where we ran into a little ASP.NET MVC beta problem. We're crossing our fingers and hoping ASP.NET MVC will have a "go live" license before we enter the public beta.

Joel describes the way they use FinalBuilder, and I describe my brief dabblings with MSBuild.

On the strange sentiment of "I agree with everything you've written, except.."

Is it possible to "specialize in being a generalist"? Does that even mean anything? Expressing our general affection for Seth Godin, while acknowledging that he is, after all, a marketing weasel. But a really, really good one!

If you’d like to submit a question to be answered in our next episode,
record an audio file (90 seconds or less) and mail it to podcast@stackoverflow.com. You can record a question using nothing but a telephone and a web browser.